A baby was born

Last Saturday night, in the clear and cold depths of the Bass Strait, a Southern Right Whale calf was born.

No human witnessed it but we know it happened, because the mother whale had been seen without a baby a few days earlier, then on Sunday, there was a calf!

It happened, appropriately, out front of Logan’s Beach in Warrnambool at a viewing platform known as the Whale Nursery.

This birth marked the beginning of the Southern Right Whale season in Victoria and since then there have been sightings of these large, wild mammals all along the coast from Airey’s to Portland, where yesterday locals were treated to a display of seven adult whales swimming just 10 metres away from the breakwater.

Each whale season is celebrated with hundreds of locals and visitors flocking to local viewing platforms and cliffs to witness these bus-sized, majestic beasts up close.

There are a number of Warrnambool locals who have held 30-year-long love affairs with these whales... a relationship that is somewhat one-sided for the most part, involving hours of standing on cold windy coastlines, searching a blue horizon for the barnacle-crested, dark object.

I met a few of these guys who become infatuated with photographing and spotting the whales each season. Leigh Kreutzer-Hull works in the afternoon but spends his mornings checking the coastline for whales, when he speaks about them you can see the glow of a true passion light up his face.

Mark Williams is much the same, he's been doing this so long that he knows not to take too many photos at the start of the season, when the calves are young and the new families are fairly inactive. He waits for the breaching and tail slapping that will begin further into the season

The fantastic photo you see above was taken by Chris Farrell, who is so passionate about his photography that although he lives in Melbourne, he drives hours up to the coast, invests in chartered flights and expensive camera equipment to capture images like the one above. He fits all this in between working as a building inspector on large sites such as the Melbourne Zoo and the MCG.

His passion for photography stems from a deeper passion for wildlife, also the reason that a percentage of his earnings are donated to the World Wildlife Foundation. Chris was happy for the ABC to use his photo as he's always been a huge fan of ABC Environment and "would love to give something back." Thanks Chris!

These are just a few of the whale enthusiasts, there are many more. Some link up and share whale sightings via the Great Ocean Road Whales Facebook group, but I do wonder if there is another more secret society that communicate through other means... low-frequency sonar perhaps...? Or maybe just a community newsletter, equally as effective.

It is difficult to know what truly drives this obsession because I believe it goes beyond the usual "I want to capture that one perfect wildlife photo". I think that there is a deep wonderment for these animals that began thousands of years ago with the Gundijtamarra people, and continues today through their descendents and with the flocks of photographers, whale-watchers, conservationists, activists and coastal locals who stare out to sea, smiling and waiting.

Even so, there are now low numbers of these mammals. They are listed as endangered and as such, during the Southern Right Whale season all boats are banned from specific areas including the nursery and mating grounds of Logans Beach, while planes and helicopters such as the one this photograph was taken from must fly no lower than 1000 feet.

The season is from 1 June to 31 October. Enjoy it and share your pictures of the wild outdoors (or perhaps the wild photographers!) in ABC Open's Snapped: Wild gallery.